Wynnewood Shopping Center restaurant plan back for zoning relief

With its original restaurant tenant set to open next month in a different location, the owner of the Wynnewood Shopping Center hopes to revive a plan for an old postal building there.

Federal Realty Investment Trust was before the Lower Merion Township Zoning Hearing Board again July 21, seeking relief from a decision that limits expansion on the 14-acre property at 50 E. Wynnewood Road.

With at least one more witness to be called, the hearing was continued after 3 hours. It will resume at a special meeting Thursday, July 31, at 7:15 p.m. at the Township Building, 75 E. Lancaster Ave., Ardmore.

PHOTOS: Wynnewood Road in Lower Merion beginning in the 1960s.

It was the third time in two years that Federal Realty had come to the zoning board with an appeal related to a plan for change at the center it has owned since 1996. The company acquired the property after its major anchor of four decades, a John Wanamaker department store, closed its doors.

In 2012 and 2013, it had sought and obtained special exception approval for an LA Fitness club in the former Borders Books building, after quelling community opposition by agreeing to limit hours. The club never pursued locating there.

At the same time, the company had obtained, after lengthy discussion and the imposition of some stringent restrictions on hours and a ban on outdoor music, land development approval from the Lower Merion Board of Commissioners for a new restaurant pad site. The plan called for demolition of the long-vacant mail distribution building at the rear of the center, closest to homes in the Shortridge neighborhood, for construction of a larger restaurant with outdoor seating. The prospective tenant, confirmed at the time, was a Mad Mex restaurant and bar.

Not long after a preliminary plan for the restaurant was approved, the center owners were informed it did not comply with conditions set by the townships zoning authority 60 years earlier, in 1953, when plans for the Wanamakers branch were moving forward. Those conditions, which set caps on building coverage and interior square footage and addressed parking requirements, had apparently been nearly lost to memory over the decades.

Just about a year ago, Federal Realty, which had filed an appeal of the preliminary plan decision with the Montgomery County courts, returned to the zoning board seeking a determination that the 1953 restrictions no longer applied, or to have some of them eliminated.

While hearings and a decision in that matter stretched on vigorously opposed by both Lower Merion Township and Shortridge Civic Association -- Federal Realty moved ahead, confirming earlier this year that it had leased space in the Borders building to Mad Mex. It is expected to open in August in a portion of the ground floor, while the second floor now houses a DSW shoe store. Continued...

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Wynnewood Shopping Center restaurant plan back for zoning relief